WILD FLOWERS BLUE AND PURPLE 
are symbolic of true love and constancy. A pretty 
Persian legend, told by the poet Shiraz, runs as follows: 
“Tt was in the golden morning of the early world, when . 
an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Eden. 
He had fallen from his high estate through loving a 
daughter of earth, nor was he permitted to enter again 
until she whom he loved had planted the flowers of 
the Forget-me-not in every corner of the world. 
He returned to earth, and assisted her, and they went 
hand in hand over the world, planting the Forget- 
me-nots. When their task was ended they entered 
Paradise together; for the fair woman, without tasting 
the bitterness of death, became immortal like the angel, 
whose love her beauty had won, when she sat by the 
river twining the Forget-me-nots in her hair.” 
This species is a native of Europe and Asia, and 
is the true flower of our gardens, which has escaped, 
and is found in marshes and along brooks or 
in moist meadows from May to August. It is 
a low-branching perennial, having slender root- 
stocks or stolens. The slender, leafy stems grow 
from six to eighteen inches in length, and often take 
root again at the lower leaf joints. The oblong, lance- 
shaped, and hairy leaf has a blunt tip and partly clasps 
the stalk. The small spreading, five-lobed, yellow- 
centred, light blue, or sometimes pink, flowers are 
borne in small, one-sided, curving terminal clusters. 
The buds are tinted with pink. The Forget-me-not 
is spreading rapidly from Nova Scotia to New York, 
and Pennsylvania southward and westward. The 
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